The character of the race is summed up in that hopeless garment, which
unfits the wearer for every pleasure and every duty of modern life. An
article of everyday clothing which prevents a man from using his upper
limbs, which swathes them up, like a silkworm in its cocoon--can anything
more insane be imagined? Wrapped therein for nearly all their lives, the
whole race grows round-shouldered; the gastric region, which ought to be
protected in this climate of extremes, is exposed; the heating of their
heads, night and day, with its hood, cannot but injure their brains; their
hands become weak as those of women, with claw-like movements of the
fingers and an inability to open the palm to the full.
No wonder it takes ten Arabs to fight one negro; no wonder their spiritual
life is apathetic, unfruitful, since the digits that explore and design,
following up the vagrant fancies of the imagination, are practically
atrophied. You will see beggars who find it too troublesome, on cold days,
to extricate their hands for the purpose of demanding alms! Man has been
described as a tool-making animal, but the burnous effectually counteracts
that wholesome tendency; it is a mummifying vesture, a step in the
direction of fossilification.
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